When I was nine years old, I got stung by a wasp on my brother’s bedroom floor. I was sitting with him and one of our friends, and I adjusted my leg, felt an awful stab, and saw a giant yellow jacket (which my adult self thinks may have been honeybee) dangling like a Christmas ornament from the back of my inner thigh. I screamed, of course. Not just because of the sting, but at the horror of this insect attaching itself to me and refusing to fall back to the carpet. My friend rushed to my rescue. My brother helped too, though he had a disturbingly delayed reaction, as he was busy laughing.
For some reason, I attract creatures. And not just the cuddly ones, though they seem to find me too. There have been multiple bird poop incidents over the years. I was working as a receptionist at a law firm in the early 2000s, and I got pooped on by a fat pigeon near what’s now the PNC bank building on my way back from lunch. I had to go the rest of the day with a large water stain and the smudged remnants of excrement all over my shirt. Back in 2017, I got pooped on by a seagull while my Dad, sister, and I were waiting for a ferry tour of San Francisco. Dozens of people in line, and I was the only one shat on. My sister, who struggled to conceal her laughter, offered to take me to the bathroom and help clean off my forehead. To which my dad helpfully responded, “Forget it, girls! We’ll lose our place. Deal with it on the boat.”
And who could forget the pooping incident of 2020. Somehow, I angered an entire flock of Canada geese, and large splotches of goose poo covered my car from hood to taillights. Naturally, I had a doctor’s appointment that morning, so I had to drive my poop mobile all the way downtown. When I got back, I asked my mom to go with me to wash it. It’s the only time I’ve requested company to a carwash for the moral support. It was extra exciting when a little boy pointed to my car as it was being hosed down and said, “Look at all the crap on that car, Mom.”
I was the only one in the living room at 4:30 am a few months later when a bat circled frantically. I ran into the bedroom and told my husband to get it out, and he said, “Honey, what do you want me to do about it?” rolled over, and went back to sleep. One of the joys of living in Kentucky, a state full of caves, is we have no shortage of bats. Later that night, the bat remerged while we were watching TV. It held us hostage by sticking itself upside down on the wall like a refrigerator magnet until we got the courage to walk past it and go downstairs. The next day, the bat specialist (whatever he’s called) freed it with an industrial-sized fan and an open window. He also did whatever bat people do, then comforted me by saying, “Don’t worry, ma’am. It’s a small colony in the house. Only about five or six bats.”
Perhaps the worst of the creature events (and I’m leaving out the rat I discovered that was eating our German Shepherds’ dog food when I was kid) is the ocean incident of 2019. My husband and I were in Tybee Island, Georgia, and I was stung from arms to toes by a particularly sadistic jellyfish. My husband was standing only a foot or two away, but the jellyfish targeted only me. I ran out of the ocean as fast as one can run out of an ocean, and we spent a couple hours at the urgent care, while a lovely young doctor scraped every tentacle off me with tongue depressors and shaving cream.
I’m not sure why these creatures find me. I read an article a couple years back that people with Type O blood attract the most mosquitos. I’m not one to cite sources, so you should do your own research. Here, you’ll have to rely on modern day’s preferred evidence style – anecdotal. But I’ve not met a mosquito that didn’t adore me. I can be sitting with a table full of people outside in the evening, sipping on whatever and talking about whatever, and it never fails. My wrists and ankles look like a child’s dot-to-dot game, while the folks next to me, though not spared, don’t face the same level of attention. I suppose there’s a certain superiority complex one could get from having Type O negative blood. In the hierarchy of blood types, both for donation and mosquito preference, the Os are the crème de la crème. But I’ve never been one to brag.
Sarah Mackey Kirby 